The Foot of Allah (al-Qadam)

“The Foot means a people sent into the Fire”, or “a foot of truthfulness”, or “the one named al-Jabbār”

The response

These explanations are all set out in one place by al-Khaṭṭābī, and al-Bayhaqī reports them from him in al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Ṣifāt. Al-Khaṭṭābī says first why he is giving them: Abū ʿUbayd said that we narrate these ḥadīths and do not go looking for meanings, and that he himself would not go forward where those greater than he held back, but that the people of his time had become two parties, one denying the reports and the other going so far with their apparent sense that it nearly brought them to likening. Then he gives his explanations.

Al-Bayhaqī reported in al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Ṣifāt from al-Khaṭṭābī:

That is for the word qadam. The Prophet ﷺ also said rijl, and rijl cannot be sent forward, so al-Khaṭṭābī needed another explanation for it.

He said:

So on this explanation the word in the ḥadīth is the name of a swarm of locusts, borrowed for a crowd of men. Read the sentence of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with this substituted: “The Fire will not be filled until He places His swarm of locusts in it.” This is what a learned man has come to, and his reason was fear of the word “foot”.

The second is on “I have put it under my foot”. The Prophet ﷺ said at the conquest that every claim of the Jāhiliyyah was under these two feet of his. He said “these two”, and he has feet. The figure belongs to a man who has feet, and that is how it was understood. A man who has no feet does not say it. So he has taken a figure which depends on the reality in order to deny the reality. And he has said that the Fire is restrained by something other than itself, by a thing that is placed. Who places it, and what is placed?

The third is on his example. He brings the line of Imruʾ al-Qays in which the night stretches out its spine, and he says that there is no spine there. Everyone who hears the poet knows that a night has no spine, for it is a night. Nobody knows that of the Lord except by having decided it first. He has compared the Prophet’s saying ﷺ about Rabb al-ʿIzzah to a poet’s saying about the dark.

The fourth is the rule that he gives at the end, and it is the most useful thing in the passage. He asks himself why he does not treat the Hand and the Face in the same way.

He said:

So the Hand, the Face and the Eye are taken according to their apparent sense without a modality, by the admission of the man from whom the later Ashʿarīs take their explanations of the Foot. That rule condemns all of them on the Hand, the Face and the Eye. As for the Foot, his distinction does not stand. The Shin is mentioned in the Book in the verse of al-Qalam. The Foot has the verse of Sūrat Qāf behind it, in which Hell says “Is there more?”, and it goes along with the meaning of that verse, as he himself requires. It is agreed upon in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from Abū Hurayrah and Anas. And his fear of likening is what the Hand has too: if it can be taken without likening in the one case it can be taken without likening in the other. He said that those who hold back did so out of awe, and the imam he named, Abū ʿUbayd, held back and went looking for no meaning. He went forward where Abū ʿUbayd stopped, and he says so.

Their books give three explanations of the ḥadīth, and all three have to get rid of the pronoun. The first says that the Foot is a group of people whom Allah has sent forward to the Fire, as the word qadam is said of those who go before. The second says that it is the “foot of truthfulness” of the verse, or the good standing of someone. The third says that “the Compeller” in the narration of Anas is one of the arrogant men of the creation, who is thrown in and fills it.

The first is answered by the ḥadīth. Hell keeps saying “Is there more?” while it is being filled with those who deserve it. If the Foot were one more group of them, then Hell would say “Is there more?” of them as well. The ḥadīth says that it stops at this. And Abū Hurayrah’s wording ends: “and Allah wrongs none of His creation.” A people thrown in to fill the Fire would be the thing that the sentence denies.

The second reads into the ḥadīth a word from a verse which is in a different construction. The verse has a qadam of truthfulness that people have “with their Lord”. In the ḥadīth, Rabb al-ʿIzzah places His own Foot. And the narrations have rijl in the same place, and nobody says that a rijl is a good standing.

The third is the invention of a man who could not bear the verb. Rabb al-ʿIzzah is the wording of the narration of Anas that was quoted above. No arrogant man is called by that name, and the Fire does not swear by the ʿizzah of one of its own inmates.

Their reason for all three is the claim that a Foot is a limb. The answer to that is given in the chapter on the Hands, and it is the same answer here. Ibn ʿAbbās said that the Kursī is the place of the two Feet, and the chapter on the Kursī gives the chain.